Words On Wednesday

The crown jewels of literature on The Legend of Zelda include “Hyrule Historia,” “Art & Artifacts,” and “Encyclopedia.” The “Goddess Trilogy” as they are called together, these three books are dense packages of lore, artwork, interviews, and nearly anything you could want to see about everyone’s favorite Hylian Link and his entourage. I picked up a copy of Hyrule Historia for my cousin as a Christmas present the year it came out. As much as I like Zelda, he has a tattoo of Link holding the triforce, so I can’t really compete with that. Soon after, I got a copy for myself. Just because he gets the first copy doesn’t mean I’m leaving myself out. As a Zelda fan, I would be remiss if I DIDN’T own a copy. The biggest draw of Hyrule Historia when it first came out was the official timeline. Zelda games are notorious for being tentatively related to each other, but not exactly sequels. There were numerous fan discussions about what order the games came in, but nothing from Nintendo to con...

I’ve had an active membership with Runescape for a few years now, but I think it’s about time to take a break. I started back in 2018 with a three month bronze premier club. That taste of membership got me wanting more. In 2019 and every year since, I have maintained membership with the gold premier club option. That’s half a decade of sustained membership. I haven’t kept membership this long since the very first time I actually paid for Runescape way back around 2007. For a while, I played enough to justify premier club each year. My metric was whether I could play enough to make enough money to afford bonds for next year’s membership. I haven’t paid REAL money for Runescape since I canceled my monthly membership  back in 2013 . I was able to make enough in-game currency to buy membership that way. Over the years, a few things happened. Bonds got exponentially more expensive. What used to be 14 million coins  is currently 114 million coins (as of April). That’s way more mone...

A lot has happened with Runescape since the last time I  posted about it , over 3 years ago. I got max skills, a new skill came out, and then I got max again. The mobile beta that I was playing on saw a full release. It’s been a good time. Now, bear in mind, this post is written WAY before being published. As my previous post indicated, I’m writing way ahead just because I have the time available. These details are based September 3, 2021 and the status of my account then. I can’t tell you where I’ll be once the post is public. So, where am I now? My total level is 2865/3055 and I have both Magic and Invention at 200m experience. All of my skills are at least 99, and I’m working on getting skills to 120 when that provides extra benefit. Beyond working on those skills, I try to continue making enough money to afford bonds. Compared to the most recent post, the way I play the game isn’t even the same anymore. I started at first with a single bond, and then I ramped it up to groups of...

The mobile version of Runescape recently entered beta release, and I was so excited to get into the program and try it out. Runescape mobile (not Old School RuneScape, as that was ported to mobile several months before the RuneScape 3 mobile beta) allows players to access the game through a genuinely mobile platform, rather than my unconventional access via remote desktop. With this release, there are some improvements over remote desktop access, but also some surprising shortcomings. Having played now for a few weeks, I have an informed opinion on the abilities and limitations of the mobile beta. I’ll go through a few of the elements for each platform, and evaluate which is better, or which I plan to continue using. First, the mobile beta is currently only accessible to paid members. Fortunately, that includes players who purchase membership through bonds as I do, but I did not have an active membership when I got into the beta program. I was already planning on using a bond agai...

It’s been quite a few weeks (months, actually) since I last posted about Runescape. Since that time, I’ve accomplished quite a bit and gotten banned again. Without further ado, an update on the current state of my Runescape account. To follow up with the final thoughts of my most recent post , I did manage to get the remainder of the golem outfit pieces and combine them into a full Magic golem outfit. Between Trahaearn hour Harmonized runite mining and Seren stone daily challenges, I did a lot of mining. Since level 99 mining yields double Gemstone golem fragments, I was getting roughly 200 fragments every 5 minutes. I already had several pieces of the outfit, and more than enough fragments to finish it out. The only missing requirement was level 20 invention. I got that pretty quickly after getting 99 fletching, but unfortunately before I discovered that you can disassemble noted items. That’s right, I disassembled loads of unnoted unstrung maple shieldbows, 28 at a time, all the...

After a few times starting and stopping, I’ve reached level 99 fletching and popped a bond… or three. As I mentioned way back in November , the decision of Jagex to make fletching a f2p skill is part of what made me start playing again. It was an influx of new content, and a skill that I enjoyed playing. Mind you, at the time, I didn’t realize it could be free/profitable to train. I just knew that it was something I could do without paying for membership. Turns out, just because fletching is what brought me back to Runescape, doesn’t mean I would actually do much of it. Between  my last post of my last stretch of playing, and the first post of this current stint, I only got 13,843 xp in the skill. For comparison, a single load of unstrung maple shieldbows gives around 1,600 xp. So I did less than 10 loads worth of my bread and butter training method, and just stopped completely at 2,047,727 fletching xp. I liked fletching, sure, but there were more pressing issues in the w...

I knew it would happen eventually. My third bond recently ended and I’m getting to the point now here I’m pretty burned out with the paid game. Mind you, I still haven’t paid a cent of real money on the game since my purchased membership ended on 8 September 2013 . But the whole situation of having to prioritize making money within the game to pay for the bonds I’ve purchased with in-game currency… it gets old. I’ve fortunately found some ways to recoup the monetary cost of a bond pretty quickly, but temporary membership of any sort still adds that feeling of obligation to the game. For each bond that I buy, I’ve got 14 days of membership, and I have to max out what I do within that time, else I’ve wasted it. The entirety of my first bond was colored with that “ermahgerd, I’m a member again” magic. Considering my only exposure to p2p in the past almost 5 years was a free membership weekend, having 2 weeks to do whatever I wanted in the game was great. It wasn’t really driven, and hones...

I didn’t *mean* to pop another bond. Well, I meant to, but it wasn’t my original intention to do it so soon. When my previous bond ended on 14 May 2018, I was genuinely content with going back f2p. As much as I had fun playing the p2p content, I got my fill of it and I was perfectly fine with returning to the f2p grind and finishing out 99 Fletching. Like I mentioned in the post before, there were a few things that I had tentatively planned for the next time I used a bond, but I figured it would be several months before I did. Unfortunately, the week that my bond ended was the same week that Jagex ran the Mental Health Awareness Week promotional event. This event, similar to the “ Going Like Clockwork ” event and many others, consistent of a temporary currency that could be obtained by any sort of skilling activities in the game. Players gained Charity Tokens from just about anything that gained experience. After players have earned enough tokens to unlock all of the ma...

After 2 weeks of membership, my bond has expired and I am back to f2p status. Was my experience worth the 15.5 million gp I paid for the bond? Was it worth whatever the current price of a bond is? What caused me to actually pull the trigger on consuming a bond was the result of the Spring Fayre  on my inventory. Because the activities of the event required no inventory space, and I wasn’t going to waste that time doing anything else, I accrued a ton of xp items that were either p2p exclusive, or could be more effectively used on p2p skills. Since most everything else in the game requires an empty inventory to effectively participate, I was forced with the decision to either trash a lot of really useful items or use a bond to take advantage of them. May as well make the most of the situation. My initial goal after consuming the bond was making enough money to purchase another and replace the one I had used. Figuring that bonds would only go up in price until the next DXPW , I...